Try not to be nasty, Chris. They really are 'giving it away'.
Harry ******************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 9104 818 352-4141 ******************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 5:33 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] What's wrong with Gates "donations" (was Re: FW: [CC] America's Deepening Moral Crisis (fwd)) Harry Pollard replied: > Gates is advocating heavy giving by the very rich. Nothing wrong with that. See 2 articles below on what's wrong with that. > Would you suggest they don't give away their fortunes? I would suggest they start to really give it away instead of just applying cynical tax-deduction and profit maximization schemes under the guise of "philanthropy"! Chris http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0823-26.htm The Gates And Buffet Foundation Shell Game By Sheldon Drobny Co-founder of Air America Radio 8-26-6 My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. I have known for years that a smart wealthy person could keep control of all his assets without estate or income taxes through cleverly structured charitable foundations. These foundations are perfectly legal and allow the donors to keep absolute control of all their money and power and accumulate enormous appreciation free of taxation. In 1967, the loopholes were outrageous and the law has tightened some of these tactics for the rich. However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH BY THESE TWO WILL BE MUCH MORE MASSIVE BECAUSE THEY WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO PAY ANY TAXES. The Gates Foundation now has about $60 Billion under the control of the wealthiest people in America. They do not have to sell any of their positions in the stocks that they put under the tax-exempt umbrella. Furthermore, they can vote their stock holdings the same as if they did before and they can make the same investment decisions about their considerable corporate holdings. Both Buffet and Gates exhibited the most predatory capitalistic practices as corporate executives and investors. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway are not models of socially responsible capitalism. That being said, this foundation will be in the long run richer than the Catholic Church, which has accumulated wealth and power for over 1500 years. However, the results will be exactly the same. They will never liquidate enough of their assets to do any real good for the most onerous problem we have as humans; the worldwide poverty that is caused by the great disparity between the haves and the have-nots. GATES WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE POPE The Gates Foundation and the Catholic Church have the same goals. They are to keep the legacies for which they were created. For Bill Gates and Warren Buffet it is the control and legacy of family wealth as in the ancient days of the Pharos of Egypt. And by not paying any taxes, Gates will be more powerful than the Pope. I realize that this foundation has done more for disease research and education than any single government institution. But, that is just a condemnation of how little rich countries do for the less fortunate. AND THE UNITED STATES IS ONE OF THE WORST EXAMPLES OF HOW LITTLE IT DOES FOR ITS OWN PEOPLE. The great problems of the world today are a direct result of the wide disparity between the rich and poor. But, it is hard for the wealthiest to even look at this as an issue of most importance. Catholic Charities do a lot for the poor and I am sure that the Gates Foundation will do a lot for diseases of the poor. But, that is merely a band-aid for one of the symptoms of poverty. The real issue today is poverty. The governments that keep their people in abject poverty while their leaders are obscenely rich from oil revenues cause many of the problems in the Middle East. But, even the poorest of their people now have access to satellite TV and Internet information that shows these people how much they are being exploited. The simple answer that they hate us for our freedom is absurd. They hate us because they see the wealthy and powerful as the cause of their suffering. As was the case in Germany in the 1920s, even a cultured society can succumb to irrationally violent leaders if they are hungry and poor. It is a human problem that we saw occur in a 1st world country. The 1968 movie, The Shoes of the Fisherman was a fictional account of a new Pope who had the conscience to solve world poverty by giving away all the Church's assets. Below is a summary of the plot from www.imdb.com. "After twenty years in a Siberian labor camp, Kiril Lakota, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Lvov, is set free. The Catholic Archbishop is released and sent to Rome, where the ailing Pope makes him a Cardinal. The world is in a state of crisis - a famine in China is exacerbated by United States restrictions on Chinese trade and the ongoing Chinese-Soviet feud. When the Pontiff dies, Lakota finds himself elected Pope. But the new Pope Kiril I is plagued by self-doubt, by his years in prison, and by the strange world he knows so little about. This movie contains extensive information about Catholic faith & practice, as a television news reporter steps in from time-to-time to explain the procedures involved in selecting a new Pope." OUR CHANCES OF SURVIVAL ARE MARKEDLY DECREASED The movie was not great but it did emphasize the point I am making in this piece. Unless wealthy people and governments around the world recognize the threat that poverty has on humanity, our chances of survival are markedly decreased. And unless the major wealth of the world is used to help feed its people, the diseases caused by poverty will never be cured. The prevention of diseases, both physical and mental, caused by hunger and poverty are the real dangers we face. And with all the concentrated wealth, we have the capacity to give everyone enough to survive and still leave the wealthy with plenty of luxuries. IF BILL GATES GAVE $29 BILLION AWAY AND KEPT ONLY $1BILLION HE WOULD STILL HAVE A WONDERFUL LIFE. IF HE GAVE IT TO SALLY STRUTHERS, SHE COULD PROBABLY FEED THE WORLD. ======================================================================= http://bit.ly/as6QQI [Via Campesina] La Via Campesina denounces Gates Foundation purchase of Monsanto Company shares MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2010 13:38 Glendive, Montana. La Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), a global peasant movement representing small farmers, landless workers, fisherfolk, rural women, youth and indigenous peoples, with 150 member organizations from 70 countries on five continents, has denounced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trustís recent acquisition of Monsanto Company shares. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was founded in 1994 by Microsoft founder William H. Gates, and today exerts a hegemonic influence on global agricultural development policy. The Foundation channels hundreds of millions of dollars into projects that encourage peasants and farmers to use Monsantoís genetically-engineered (GE) seed and agrochemicals. In August the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the $33.5 billion asset trust endowment that funds the Foundationís philanthropic projects (and to which Bill & Melinda are trustees) disclosed that it purchased 500,000 shares of Monsanto shares for just over $23 million.(1) According to Dena Hoff, a diversified family farmer in Glendive, Montana and North American coordinator of La Via Campesina, ìThe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trustís purchase of Monsanto shares indicates that the Gates Foundationís interest in promoting the companyís seed is less about philanthropy than about profit-making. The Foundation is helping to open new markets for Monsanto, which is already the largest seed company in the world.î Since 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation, an ardent promoter of GE crops for the worldís poor, to implement the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which is opening up the continent to GE seed and chemicals sold by Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta. The Foundation has given $456 million to AGRA, and in 2006 hired Robert Horsch, a Monsanto executive for 25 years, to work on the project. In Kenya about 70 percent of AGRA grantees work directly with Monsanto (2) , nearly 80 percent of Gates' funding in the country involves biotech, and over $100 million in grants has been made to Kenyan organizations connected to Monsanto. In 2008, some 30 percent of the Foundation's agricultural development funds went to promoting or developing GE seed varieties (3). In April the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and finance ministers from the US, Canada, Spain and South Korea pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), managed by the World Bank to ìtackle world hunger and poverty.î(4) In June GAFSP announced that it gave $35 million to Haiti to increase smallholder farmersí access to ìagricultural inputs, technology, and supply chains.î(5) In May Monsanto announced that it donated 475 tons of seed to Haiti, which is being distributed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The administrator of USAID is Rajiv Shah, who worked at the Gates Foundation before being appointed by the Obama administration in 2009. According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Haitian Peasant Movement of Papaye and Caribbean coordinator of La Via Campesina, ìIt is really shocking for the peasant organizations and social movements in Haiti to learn about the decision of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to buy Monsanto shares while it is giving money for agricultural projects in Haiti that promote the companyís seed and agrochemicals. The peasant organizations in Haiti want to denounce this policy which is against the interests of 80 percent of the Haitian population, and is against peasant agricultureóthe base of Haitiís food production. î The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also funds the US governmentís Feed the Future initiative, administered by the State Department. At a July 20 congressional subcommittee hearing on Feed the Future, executive vice president for Monsanto Gerald Steiner testified that ìFeed the Future is exciting not least because it recognizes both the business imperatives by which Monsanto and other companies must operateÖ We want to do good in the world, while we also do well for our shareholders.î Steiner mentioned Monsantoís project to develop drought resistant maize for Africa, also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.(6) According to Hoff, ìFoundations, however well meaning, should not be setting food and agricultural policies for any nation of peoples. Democracy demands the informed participation of civil society to determine what is in the best interest of each nation's population. ëDoing well for our shareholdersí seems an ulterior motive for meddling in the health and welfare of the planet and all its inhabitants in order to make a profit.î Perhaps not by coincidence, in July Monsantoís chief executive officer and president Hugh Grant purchased $2 million of company shares, and vice president and chief financial officer Carl M. Casale bought $1.6 million of shares. ìGrant and Casale have pocketed nice sums from selling Monsanto shares over the years.î(7) Purchase of Monsanto shares by Gates, Grant and Casale could have been in anticipation of last weekís news that researchers published the genome for wheat, the staple grain for one-third of the world's population. ìFor Monsanto, a quality wheat genome map could potentially help in our efforts to bring better wheat varieties to farmers," said Monsanto. (8) In 2008, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $26.8 million to Cornell University to research wheat, and in May awarded $1.6 million to researchers at Washington State University to develop drought-resistant GE wheat varieties.(9) The Gates Foundation continues to push Monsantoís products on the poor, despite mounting evidence of the ecological, economic and physical dangers of producing and consuming GE crops and agrochemicals. In June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monsanto Co. vs. Geertson Seed Farms, its first case about a GE crop. The Court recognized that genetic contamination of non-GE crops from transgene flow of DNA from GE crops, which occurs through the spread of pollen by wind and bees, is harmful and onerous to the environment and farmers. According to the web site of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ìAGRA and its partners have released more than 100 new varieties of improved seed across the [African] continent.î(10) La Via Campesina maintains that the best way to ensure healthy food, adapt to climate change, conserve soils, water and forests, and revitalize rural economies is with policies that promote food sovereignty and small-scale, agroecological farming systemsóthe foundation of which is native seed varieties. The United Nations estimates that 75 percent of the worldís plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers have abandoned native seed for genetically- uniform varieties offered by corporations such as Monsanto. Genetic homogeneity increases farmersí vulnerability to sudden changes in climate and the appearance of new pests and diseases, while seed agrobiodiversityówith native seed adapted to different microclimates, altitudes and soilsóis fundamental for adapting to climate change. Saving and replanting native seed increases agrobiodiversity and strengthens cropsí genetic plasticity (their capacity to adapt rapidly over generations to changing growing conditions). According to Henry Saragih, general coordinator of La Via Campesina in Jakarta, "La Via Campesina condemns this missappropriation of humanitarian aid for commercial ends and the privatization of food policies" XXX For more information or media requests, contact [email protected] [End notes on site] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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